IBM Says Nintendo Wii U Uses Watson's Brains

The same computer that bested people on Jeopardy powers Nintendo's new console.

Nintendo fans concerned about how powerful Nintendo's new console Wii U will be may have something new to boast about. According to Engadget, who spoke with IBM about the technology powering Nintendo's new console, the system makes use of the same processor technology that powers Watson, the supercomputer that recently beat a bunch of contestants on Jeopardy. While IBM wouldn't reveal the processor's clock speeds, The Wii U uses a 45nm custom chip with, what IBM states, is "a lot" of embedded DRAM.

But then again, specs are specs -- one look at the high definition Zelda demo running on the thing is probably enough to convince most gamers.

Comments (20)

OH!!!

i also hope that they let me use my toshiba portable hard drive, they said you could use a USB hard drive for the system. and mine is USB 3.0 and has 750GB of space which should last a wile on the system.

so excited

wile im not worried about the system in power in fact it should be NEXT gen not just compeating with xbox or PS3. but is indeed the NEXT generation of systems which was xboxes job last time. so my bet is that xbox well be the next to show their system off. ANY WAY i think that they should look into the feild for a second the PSvita well have multi touch and OLED screen and sony has bin firm that the PSvita can be used with the PS3 in that sence the PS3 well be able to do the same things the wii u can do, just not the graphics. SO nintendo should fallow up with a OLED screen of their own, multitouch, and digitizer pen.

they should also add skype to the wii u and 3DS so you can cross platform chat, and since xbox well be adding it to the xbox you well have all your xbox friends and PC users to chat with.

3, they should look into cloud gaming. wile the onlive system is using current gen graphics (because it plays curent gen games) it well also be upgrading with next gen games. and be able to do so for some time. SO nintendo should just make this an option. even if its down the road.

finely i think they should tweek the look of the system just a bit so help remove poeples mind set of the wii because that well drive some customers away.

but in all i have bin waiting for something like this for YEARS. for FPS multiplayer, and multi player RPG i wont have to share the TV with people and worry about them falling behind.

Cell

The PPC core used in Cell and Xenon is a custom core, not POWER4. I would imagine that for some tasks the Cell's SPEs will still run circles around a Wii U, but a POWER7 certainly provides more general-use processing power.

Fuck That!

I need to see specs! Nintendo pulled this same shit with the Wii and all that was was an overclocked Gamecube! Maybe they do not want people to compare to the PS3 and 360 to see that it may add up to be no better or not even as good as those systems? Nintendo loves to hides specs or features that render the system wiik. At the same time, they usually have a feature that gives it an edge as well.

Really?

Since GC

Nintendo has been using IBM chipsets and so far haven't dissapointed in reliability. If Nintendo continues tradition, they'll use an ATI (by AMD) GPU. And since ATI the choice for most Android tablets running Honeycomb, I feel confident that the GPU will certainly be on par with the CPU in terms of performance. Who cares what the name is. Would you still want to date and bang a hot chick named Charlie? Toni?

Looks Impressive Enough

Well if this report is accurate, then the WiiU definitly has a more powerful CPU than even the PS3. Sorry fanboys but even the weakest Power7 IBM makes is going to wipe the floor with the PS360 CPU's in almost every case. If the GPU is comperably powered we're looking at a platform that is somewhere between two and three times as powerful as either the PS3 or 360.

As for claim that the tech demo's look like early 360/PS3 games. Well I call bullcrap on this, most early PS3 and 360 games look positivly crappy by todays standards, and the Zelda demo at least looks better than quite a few games I see released now. That is pretty impressive, seeing as tech-demo's are usually thrown together during a very short period of time. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised if they recycled models from Skyward Sword for that tech demo.

Its looks...

...from the Zelda demo and the footage shown during the presentation that the console's on about a par with 2006 360 & PS3 titles which still puts them about 5 years behind MS & Sony graphically. Not that that's gonna make a jot of difference to sales though lol.